Muslim Women are Ethnically Diverse

• In the USA, the majority of Muslims are either African-American or come from South Asian countries. For Muslim women, this means that Arab cultural customs don't have great influence over the lives of many Muslim women. In the USA, many African American Muslims are part of a group founded by the late Warith Deen Muhammad. The greater role that African American women play in religious institutions is evident in the presence of women on the boards of many predominantly African American mosques. They head committees specific to women's interests and play a greater role in governance of general mosque affairs than predominantly Arab mosques.
  
  

Muslim Women Seek Education and Economic Opportunities

• The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said, "Seek knowledge, even unto China," Muslim women around the world seek advanced degrees in the arts and sciences. Muslim women have been leaders in religious and secular education, serving as religious teachers on women's issues in Morocco, Syria, Egypt and the USA. Women's universities and sister schools to male colleges are in high demand in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Muslim Women have the right to retain property and wages, and the inheritance rights of Muslim women have made women in wealthy Gulf countries an economic force to be reckoned with.
  
  

Muslim Women are Politically Active

• The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 was part of the overall Arab Spring that began in Tunisia, but it was the Youtube video of Asma Mahfouz, a young woman, that sparked the protests on January 25, 2011. Muslim women have served as heads of state in Pakistan and Indonesia in the 20th century. They serve in the UK House of Lords and marched in the streets of Tehran in 2009. Muslim women promote voting in the USA and have staged hunger strikes in Bahrain.
  
  

Muslim Women are Religiously Diverse

• Muslim women, like Muslim men, vary in their religious practice and beliefs. Some Muslim women choose to wear garments that cover most or all of their bodies, but many don't, and Playboy magazine featured its first Muslim model, Sila Sahin, in 2011. Some Muslim women believe that marrying non-Muslim men is forbidden; others, like Huma Abedin, are married to non-Muslims. Muslim women may stay away from mixing with men, even at the mosque, or go to the head of the congregation to offer sermons and lead prayer, like Amina Wadud and Raheel Raza. Muslim women are diverse and dynamic, and lead change wherever they go.